Preliminaries

Version 07/2020 v2 The ROVR SteamVR Driver & Dashboard works with Steam VR games by enabling “binding” of hand- controller “First Person movement” native to the game to movement on a ROVR.

So, for instance in The Talos Principle VR by Croteam, free walking is available by touching the left hand trackpad on a Vive hand controller – If you are in The Talos Principle VR and you stroke your finger forwards on the left hand controller trackpad then you would move forward in game.

Similarly for Oculus Rift Touch – it’s usually Lefthand Thumbstick forward for forward motion in game and for the Oculus remote it will be D-Pad up.

There are exceptions of which Nature Treks VR and Google Earth VR are examples. These both use trigger press for movement.

Using Steam VR controller bindings allows hand controller native bindings i.e. those designed by the game developer for movement or actions in game to be “bound” to an alternative input device e.g. Native game movement is lefthand trackpad touch and this can be “bound” to movement on a ROVR VR treadmill.

Fallout4 uses Left Trackpad/Thumbstick actions to move forward and so we’ll show how this is done, but the same approach can be used for all other VR games on Steam and many that are not.

Because we are keen on making VR feel real and intuitive, we’ve included a really useful link which changes direction of movement for Fallout4 VR and Skyrim VR to be more intuitive for most people.

So first up you need to know the native movement mechanics in the game you want to play.

Fallout4 has been set up for HTC Vive and its hand controllers, but Fallout4 can be configured to work with Oculus and several other headsets.

IMPORTANT: Though we will focus on Steam VR games, Valve (Steam) has also enabled non-Steam VR content to be added to off-line Steam libraries and these non-Steam VR games can also be bound to ROVRs so long as they are played on a PC e.g. Minecraft VR and Vivecraft VR there will be many others and if you are a business and you’ve developed your own VR content that runs on a PC this content can also be imported into Steam’s off-line Library and used with a ROVR using these same techniques.

Preliminaries This assumes you have a ROVR platform set up and plugged in the 3.5mm jack lead into the ROVR and into your PC soundcard microphone input socket (often pink). If this is already in use then you can also use a USB soundcard. It’s assumed you have a recent version of Steam V020.0 or higher and SteamVR beta 1.14.1 or higher on your PC and some VR games available and Steam is running.

Version 07/2020 v2 Eventually the SteamVR release will catch up with the beta version, but for now accept SteamVR beta by opening properties (SteamVR in left hand Library list) and ticking the beta box.

Installation and setup of the ROVR Steam VR Driver / Dashboard Download the Wizdish ROVR_setup.exe file and start the installation by double clicking the file name or accept “run” as a download option.

During the installation you will be asked if you want to create a desk-top short-cut. Do so, because you will need this quick and easy access.

• Just in case you don’t, the ROVR Dashboard application is typically held in: C:\Program Files\Wizdish Rovr\RovrUI

Double click the Wizdish ROVR dashboard icon on your desktop

A dashboard will appear like below.

The top two boxes ROVR Audio Input and Steam VR Axis Output with red lines along their base show a) left box – audio input from your ROVR and b) right box – SteamVR output signal.

The two buttons on the right of the dashboard Touch / Press correspond to actions on Vive, Rift, WMR, etc hand controllers. The dashboard buttons will light up as an audio signal reaches a user settable level. The Touch / Press icons are not click actionable, but they do light up when they are active.

Left of dashboard are three boxes SETUP, INPUT MAPPING and AUDIO SETTINGS.

Clicking on these lefthand boxes will open up the corresponding settings box on the right.

SETUP will tell you what microphones are connected and if Steam VR has been found. Click on the gray with white text box Choose the microphone connected to the ROVR. You may be offered headset mic, and perhaps others, choose the microphone that causes a graph line to appear in the left-hand graph box when you slide a ROVR overshoe on the platform.

Version 07/2020 v2 INPUT MAPPING and AUDIO SETTINGS affect each other and the easiest way to set these values is to set the AUDIO SETTINGS first.

Think of Audio Setting as “master volume” and Input Mapping as fine definition.

AUDIO SETTINGS are Windows microphone input amplification levels with microphone boost. Using the supplied mono 3.5mm jack lead means you can set left or right (or both) microphone sliders to approx. 80% as shown above and the microphone boost to 100% at least to start with. If using a USB sound card then you may only see a single slider. Set this similarly to approx 80% position. You can always come back and change all setting even whilst in game to tweak them to your preference.

INPUT MAPPING – controls the way a ROVR interacts with games and can be set to your preferences and saved so you don’t have to do this each time. Audio Input levels are also saved. Hovering the mouse cursor over the headings in the INPUT MAPPING settings box e.g. hover mouse cursor over Momentum and you will see a dialogue saying what the slider does.

Because each person moves differently in real life, settings are best tweaked for personal preference, but to help start the process you might want to start with settings as shown here.

As you move a ROVR overshoe on the platform you should see graphs similar to those shown above. In some instances it may be necessary to connect to SteamVR to see the righthand graph, but not always – an idiosyncrasy of SteamVR and Windows.

To see the effect of these Dashboard settings “in game” it is necessary to “bind” ROVR movement to Active hand controller action used for forward movement in a VR game. The next section shows how this is done.

Steam VR bindings You will need Steam and the ROVR dashboard running on your PC, a VR headset, hand controllers and ROVR all connected.

Running programs may appear as tabs at the bottom of your monitor, if not then you can Alt Tab to cycle through to make the screen you want active. Use the mouse cursor/click to focus / activate the window you want.

Starting a VR game will automatically start SteamVR, but if a game is not started then

Version 07/2020 v2 SteamVR may be started by clicking on the VR icon in the top right-hand corner of the Steam screen.

Up will come a small SteamVR box and if headset, hand controllers, external sensors and ROVR are connected the SteamVR window will look something like the images above:

Click on the top left 3-bars in the Steam VR box and up will come the window to the left below. Click on Devices and then Controller Settings (was called ‘configure controller’) and you will see the window to the right below:

Click on ‘Manage Controller Bindings’ window below and window to the left below appears. The drop down enables you to choose the game to modify bindings. Active controller will likely initially show which headset controllers are Active unless you have already modified bindings.

Click on greyed “Custom” and the slider will move across.

Version 07/2020 v2 Choose your VR game in this case its Fallout4. Click on Fallout 4

Short breakout: You don’t have to do this now but you might like to implement this change of head- look as movement direction versus wand pointing as movement direction, because looking where you walk is the naturally intuitive way people walk in real life. Here’s a great link to enable walk-where-you-look in Fallout4 or Skyrim which otherwise use wand directional movement.

Step 1) Download the fallout 4 VR config tool by Bilago (I did the download manually) Available here

Step 2) Open the program and search for "UseWandDirectionalMovement"

Step 3) Change the value from 1 to 0. Congratulations, you now have a movement style that doesn't put miniaturized feet on your wrist. Ok back to controller configuration:

The screen below will appear showing the default binding for Fallout4 which is the Vive Controller The Steam VR window showing “Standing by” in the above screen shot may not be visible – it just depends where that box is cited on your monitor. You might even minimise it if you want.

Click on Vive Controller and the screen below will appear.

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Click on the ROVR controller and the following screen or similar will appear. The one shown shows binding already exist.

Click on Create New Binding and a screen like the one below will appear:

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The ROVR needs to set as a trackpad for most games and clicking the next to TRACKPAD top left of the monitor screen will open a screen like this:

Click on TRACKPAD and return to the screen below

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The box title TRACKPAD with Click, Touch and Position with “None” written to the right may have the “Nones” grayed out and these can be activated by clicking on the pencil / pen edit icon which needs to be clicked to allow the three “Nones” to turn active i.e. white text.

Click on the first “None” and you will see the following screen:

This is the binding operation – in the above screen choose the controller action which causes forward movement in game and click on this action. Often this is only one action but sometimes walking (Left Trackpad/thumbstick press) can be turned into running by a touch or perhaps the speed of walking is set by the “Left Trackpad/Thumbstick Value”.

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On clicking e.g. “Left Trackpad/Thumbstick Value” the screen will return to the small window, only now the action you chose in the previous screen for Click will now be shown Click on the next “None” and choose “Left Trackpad/Thumbstick Touch”

Finally, click on the last “None” and up will come a reduced set of options as seen below:

Where you should choose “Left Trackpad/Thumbstick Value”

Bindings should look something like the image below:

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Finally go into “Extra Settings” and click return bindings with left and right hand.

If you want these personal bindings available next time press Save Personal Bindings, you can always edit them later even in-game.

Please also publish to Steam Workshop so that others can use these bindings.

Bindings locally are implemented immediately but may take a little while for SteamVR to catch up. But once it does, if you return to “Manage Controller Bindings” and choose a/the game which you have set ROVR as the movement controller then once SteamVR has caught up you will see a window like that shown here – with Active Controller as ‘rovr’, “Custom” highlighted and text below showing source of the bindings.

Version 07/2020 v2 Fallout 4 VR and Skyrim VR bindings are:

Left trackpad/thumbstick press Left trackpad/thumbstick touch Left trackpad/thumbstick value In the Bindings screen “Extra Settings” tab tick return binding with left and right hand

Some developers use other controller inputs e.g.: Nature Treks uses Left Trigger for movement, but unfortunately uses the non-intuitive hand- controller for direction of movement.

Google Earth uses Right Trigger for forward movement. Occasionally game developers specify D-pad settings which are: Left Axis 2 Press Left Axis 2 touch Left second trackpad/thumbstick value In the Bindings screen “Extra Settings” tab tick return binding with left and right hand

Okay with bindings all set and movement in-game established. Click “BACK”, collapse or exit the screen and return to the Steam Library view.

If not already started then start the VR game for which you’ve edited the controller bindings and step into the ROVR and check to see movement of your feet corresponds to movement in game.

Because bindings can be checked whilst in- game it is much quicker to have the game running, and be in a place in the game where you can move to see if bindings work, i.e. moving a ROVR overshoe on the platform causes movement in game. REM: Bindings and ROVR dashboard settings can be changed whilst a game is running.

The 3 images here are in Arizona Sunshine with a foot moving on a ROVR platform showing movement forward in-game

If working alone then use the mirror headset view and slide a foot on the ROVR platform and adjust ROVR Dashboard sliders (not forgetting the Audio Settings) to achieve natural motion in game.

This can be done quickly with a friend altering the values whilst the person in VR calls out the effects of the changes.

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REM: Amplitude and Boost in the Audio Settings have a large effect on speed of movement.

Momentum: adjusts “overrun” i.e. when running how long it takes to stop ~40% to 50% is a good starting position.

Smoothness: adjusts the number of data points taken before making a judgment on what to do – so lower slider settings are more jerky higher adds a little delay. 50% to 60% is a good starting position

Dead Zone: allows setting of the level of ROVR output that produces movement – so you might want to adjust this to allow for some feet movement e.g. as you turn a key in a door so small feet movement don’t cause forward movement. ~10% is a good start

Sensitivity: affects speed of movement in game. The caveat being many VR games assume you are sitting or standing and not running around. If you’re sitting or standing then to avoid sim-sickness game developers only allow a lowish maximum rate of movement. This is fixed and cannot be overcome by the ROVR Dashboard. Nevertheless where running is allowed in VR games then Sensitivity will change the level of movement you need on a ROVR to get running.

Touch at: As the output gets to this level the ROVR driver will output a “Touch” event which depending on the VR game may not be used at all, or may be used to jump or run or something else.

Press at: As the output gets to this level the ROVR driver will output a “Press” event which depending on the VR game may not be used at all, or may be used to jump or run or something else.

REM settings you’ve set up and are pleased with can be saved to a file name you choose by typing in a location and file name in the Save bar on the ROVR Dashboard.